Million Worker March Movement Supports Occupy Wall Street

Clarence Thomas

The Million Worker March (MWM) organisers and activists call upon all
workers organised and unorganised and the unemployed to join and defend
the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. We extend the call to anti-war,
immigration rights, environmental and social justice activists to join
this movement which could replicate the ‘Arab Spring’ here at home.

The MWM, initiated by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) Local 10 on October 17, 2004 at the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial in Washington D.C., advanced the slogan ‘mobilising in our own
name’ independent of the two Wall Street controlled political parties
to address the economic crisis of working people in which the vast
majority are under siege financially.

All important social movements, which occurred in this country, were
started from the bottom up (rank and file/grass roots) and not from the
top down. The MWM’s mission statement speaks to how ‘...a handful of
the rich and powerful corporations have usurped our government. A
corporate and banking oligarchy changes hats and occupies public office
to wage class war on working people. They have captured the State in
their own interests.’ They represent what the OWS activists call the
1%, otherwise known as the ruling class.

Like the MWM, the OWS has emerged at a time when the two corporate
controlled political parties are preparing for the presidential
election; a smokescreen where billions are spent to promote a top down
and false ceremony of democracy.

Like the MWM, the OWS will be criticized for having demands that are
too broad. We have endured more than 50 years of corporate assault on
working people, social services, jobs, wages, pensions, health care,
public education, and housing. The pursuit of endless wars, the lack of
a comprehensive immigration policy and the erosion of the environment
in pursuit of corporate greed, makes it impossible to address all of
these issues in a sound bite. Yet one thing is crystal clear, OWS
conveys a definite anti-capitalist message. It is being expressed to
the entire world at the ‘temple’ of American Capitalism, Wall Street.
The OWS, while now a major protest movement against the capitalist
elites, must continue to deepen, expand and become a direct challenge
to corporate power. Class warfare demands fighting on multiple fronts
and it all leads back to Wall Street. While the officialdom of labour
has given verbal support to OWS, the rank and file possesses the real
power of the labour movement. It is only through rank and file unity
that labour’s true power can be realised in this OWS movement. Workers
can take action at the point of production and service as well as put
people in the streets.

We must be mindful of attempts to co-opt this movement. Let us not
forget the action of the Democratic Party and its surrogates within
AFL-CIO to pressure Wisconsin unions not to initiate any General Strike
actions in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s plans to eliminate
collective bargaining for State workers. Wisconsin workers were limited
to circulating petitions to recall targeted State republican elected
officials. This took away labour’s only real power, the ability to
withhold its labour in defence of collective bargaining.

ILWU Local 10’s Executive Board has adopted a Resolution to join and
defend the OWS and called for other longshore locals to do the same.
More importantly, Local 10 is connecting the OWS movement with the
Pacific Northwest dockers struggle with EGT in Longview, Washington.
(EGT is an international grain exporter which is attempting to rupture
longshore jurisdiction.) The driving force behind EGT is Bunge LTD., a
leading agribusiness and food company, which reported $2.4 billion in
profits in 2010. This company has strong ties to Wall Street. This is
but one example of Wall Street’s corporate attack on union workers.

On October 12th, the vice-president and secretary-treasurer of ILWU
Local 21 in Longview, WA, who are engaged in battle with EGT, were
allowed to speak by the organizers of ‘Foreclosure on Wall Street
West’. They explained their struggle to several hundred people
attending the rally that took place in the San Francisco financial
district. This is an important and strategic show of solidarity between
labour and OWS.

It was Black trade unionists that conceived and launched the MWM. Black
workers and other workers of colour should play an integral role in
expanding the power and influence of OWS. The Black unemployment rate
is 24% and growing. This needs to be a part of the discussion of the
peoples’ assemblies as it concerns empowering this peoples’ movement.

Working people need to have a political expression of our own which is
an alternative to the U.S. corporate sector that both the Democrats and
the Republicans represent. The timing of the MWM in Washington was to
prepare the beginning of a fight-back precisely because the agendas of
two political parties, acting as one, the corporate agenda of permanent
war, destruction of all social services, Jim Crow and a relentless
assault upon working people.

This is an opportune moment for rank and file working people to forge a
mass movement for fundamental change. Rarely has the importance of
unity in struggle been more compelling along an axis of class
independence.

Only by our own independent mobilisation of working people (99%) across
America, can we open the way to addressing a peoples’ agenda. The MWM
and OWS are both about building grass roots and rank and file
anti-racist unity ‘forging the fight-back’ on all governmental and
corporate policies influenced and or directed by Wall Street.